


you've always been the driver

by youremyqueen



Category: The Hour
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, Friendship/Love, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Prompt Fic, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 07:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're brilliant, Moneypenny," he tells her.</p><p>written for a comment ficathon on lj, prompt was: <i>heavy words thrown lightly</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	you've always been the driver

"You're brilliant, Moneypenny," he tells her, all the time really, whenever she does something that is, admittedly, _brilliant_. "You're beautiful," he says, too, when she looks beautiful. They should be compliments, but they're not when he says them, just fact - the truth, because Freddie only knows the truth. He's not making a gesture, he's not saying, _"You're brilliant and you're beautiful and so I love you."_

All he's saying are the words that he is saying, and what he is saying right now is this: "We'll cut out hair," - a pause, a hand running over his head and damn, how his wrists are bony - "or we'll grow it out, either way, it doesn't matter. We'll cut our hair and we'll get in a car and we'll drive - we'll just drive."

"Drive where?" she says, because she's humoring him, because her whole life is humoring him - so ardently that at some point it's become not humor at all, just honest regard.

"Everywhere," he says, throwing his hands up like that's the answer, like he's just hit on the truth of all of it, here in her office on a Sunday afternoon. "All over the world." The light from the window across the hall filters through his hair - that hair he wants to cut - and throws the shadows jagged and bright across him.

"All over the world," she says slowly, and she can feel her lips twisting happily, "in a car?" He makes her happy, is the thing, even when he's being ridiculous.

He shrugs, matching her grin. "We could get a boat, too." He's always being ridiculous, is the thing; she's always happy.

They don't cut their hair, though. They don't grow it out and they don't get in a car or a boat and they don't go everywhere, all over the world. It's not that he's lying - he _wants_ to go, he just never will. Because she is lying, because she won't really go and he won't really go without her, so it's just wasted words and and wasted smiles and ridiculous happiness.

But then Freddie does go, without her.

"You're brilliant, Bel," he tells before he leaves, thin hands cupping the sides of her face, not lightly, not like a delicate thing. An important thing, maybe, that's what she is. A brilliant thing.

His skin is cool against hers and his eyes are wide and bright and he is important, too, the most important thing - and she wants to say that, she wants to say, _"You're brilliant, too, Freddie,"_ because he is, he is just so brilliant, and beautiful - bony wrists and gaunt back and knobby knees, looks the same as he always has - but it's not just fact to her, it _means_ something. So she kisses his cheek and tells him to remember that boat, to remember to write.

"Love you," he says, as he goes, but it's not some grand confession. There are no trumpets blaring, no smooth jazz from the edges of the room. He's just telling the truth.


End file.
